Los Angeles band NO has a message of belonging for all the lonely people

Los Angeles pop rock act NO. (Courtesy, Casey Bennet)

One that presses play on Don’t You Forget About Me. Or If You Were Here. Or If You Leave. Or any of the dozens of memorable ’80s hits that populate the John Hughes oeuvre.

Because all throughout the conversation with Bradley Hanan Carter the recurring theme seems to be the need to belong in a Breakfast Club kind of way.

That begins with the tour he and his L.A. pop act NO currently find themselves on with very different members of the eclectic Arts & Crafts family — The Darcys and Calgary boys Reuben and the Dark, which hits The Gateway Wednesday night — and continues on through his life and career, and directly to his band’s debut album El Prado.

Fittingly, that release both sonically, structurally and thematically seems ready made for the big screen, a sweeping, cinematic, nu new wave statement that speaks to those very Hughesian ideas of feeling isolated and needing to be part of something.

“Since the very start of band we talked about how when you go to a movie there’s always music going on, little bits and pieces and drones and soundscapes,” Carter says during a tour stop in New Orleans.

“And we wanted to look at these songs like they’re a little three- or four-minute movie on their own but then together they’re a collection of movies. We really wanted it to feel cohesive.”

That it does. For all of those aforementioned reasons.

But mainly because of what drove Carter directly into the band and the music.

That actually goes all the way back more than a decade when he was a member of New Zealand band Steriogram, which scored some success at home at then in this part of the world with the tune Walkie Talkie Man when it was featured in a iPod ad.

Carter admits that when success hit, they were young and he was ill-prepared to deal with it, which is why he left the band, half of them living in New York, he making his way to L.A. for obvious reasons. “It’s beautiful. There’s sunshine every day. You can’t beat it.”

There he tried to immerse himself in the music scene and started a couple of projects including Pistol Youth, before finding himself at a “crossroads of sorts.” He laughs at the phrase, knowing how cliched it’s become but also knowing that his life at that time, in 2010 was in a state of flux and he certainly “wasn’t happy” and feeling incredibly alone.

“I grew up super religious, I grew up in a weird sort of world and it took me long time to finally snap out of it. And I think when I turned 30 I really did. And I just hit the bottom,” he says, noting that led to separation from family, friends and even his wife.

“I just felt really isolated. But ... I just wanted things to be real. I didn’t want to pretend anything. I’d lived in this weird world for so long, and I really wanted truth and I wanted some sort of honesty.”

Carter pauses and continues. “I just needed something to believe in. I really needed it. This band came out of a time when it was kind of do or die, in a weird sort of way. I think it takes a lot of effort to make something that you can believe in.”

It was at that point he met Sean Stentz and the pair realized that they shared a great deal in common, especially musically.

From there, almost like a day of detention, the other four members — Ryan Lallier, Simon Oscroft, Michael Walker and Reese Richardson — just kind of found themselves drawn into what would become the current lineup of NO.

“It just became,” Carter says.

Musically, the band’s songs are a somewhat more subdued take on what the Killers did when they first arrived. It’s big and dramatic, but subdued down into incredible intimacy via carter’s voice, which has drawn comparisons in almost every review to The National’s resident baritone Matt Berninger, and, of course, the lyrics, which are filled with Carter processing his own feelings of isolation.

He also wanted to bring it into the time, make it more universal, speaking as a 33-year-old in a modern smartphone and social media world where being alone doesn’t always mean you’re alone and being with others doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a connection.

“I kind of think that for us to go through this massive transition, it’s recalibrated a lot of our thinking of, what is a friend? What is someone that cares about you? Do you care about someone else? And I think a lot of us end up quite lonely. We have a lot of friends technically on social media (sites), but sometimes you just need someone there to go for a drink, to hang out, to go and talk about something or just chill,” he says.

“So the theme for this record was letting lonely people know they’re not alone being lonely. And that’s really what we drew all of the themes from for the songs and we kept going back to that.”

And, again, the conversation keeps going back to that.

From NO’s signing to A&C, which released El Prado in February, to the current massive tour, which has allowed the band to connect to those all of those lonely people in a much more personal, real and meaningful way.

“Anyone can come to one of our shows and have that moment of feeling connected and a part of something,” Carter says. “And even if it’s for 45 minutes I think that’s special and something we should celebrate.”

NO perform Wednesday night at The Gateway as part of the Arts & Crafts Label Tour, also featuring Reuben and the Dark and The Darcys.

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